"O bury me by the braken bush,
Beneath the blooming brier;
Let never living mortal ken
That ere a kindly Scot lies here."
The story of Flodden is the darkest, perhaps, on the page of Scottish history, and like Otterburn, has been written in strains grand and majestic, and certainly the most heart-moving in the whole realm of northern minstrelsy. There Scotland lost her King, the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, James's natural son, two abbots, twelve earls, seventeen lords, four hundred knights, and fifteen thousand others, all sacrificed to the fighting pride of James IV. of Scotland. Pierced by several strong arrows, the left hand hacked clean from the arm, the neck laid open in the middle, James's body was carried mournfully to Berwick. He had died a hero's death, albeit a foolish one. His last words have lived in the lines of the rhymer:
"Fight on, my men,
Yet Fortune she may turn the scale;
And for my wounds be not dismayed,
Nor ever let your courage fail.
Thus dying did he brave appear
Till shades of death did close his eyes;
Till then he did his soldiers cheer,
And raise their courage to the skies."
The era of Blood and Iron on the Borders has passed long since. Peace and prosperity prevail on both sides of the Tweed. Old animosities are seldom spoken of, and hardly ever remembered. A cordial amity and good-will and co-operation evidence the strength of the cementing element which no loyal heart, either north or south, can ever desire to see broken.